Life, Reincarnation, and Alternate Possibilities Theme Analysis

Life After Life follows protagonist Ursula Todd through a variety of lives in twentieth-century Britain. Each chapter describes an alternative path that Ursula’s life could follow, ending with her (often premature) death. In some versions of Ursula’s story, Atkinson provides her main character with slightly different circumstances, which adjust the trajectory of her life. In other versions, Ursula has pangs of “déjà vu,” which lead her to try to avert the disaster that led to her death in a previous life. Through her wide-reaching exploration of Ursula’s various reincarnations, Atkinson argues that there is no “correct” way to live, as even versions that appear “better” do not necessarily mean that Ursula lives a longer or more fulfilling life.

Throughout the novel, Atkinson repeats Ursula’s mother Sylvie’s mantra, “practice makes perfect,” leaving room for the possibility that there are better versions of one’s life that can be lived. This can be observed in the first phase of Ursula’s life, in which the circumstances around her birth and her early childhood change in each version that Atkinson writes and allows her to live longer and longer. After a short prologue, Atkinson begins Ursula’s story with tragedy: she chokes on her umbilical cord when being born because both Mrs. Haddock (the midwife) and Dr. Fellowes (the family doctor) are stuck in a snow storm. In subsequent versions, Dr. Fellowes arrives on time, providing Ursula with the ability to have a life in the first place. In another storyline, when Ursula is four years old, she follows her older sister Pamela out into the ocean when a big wave catches her and she drowns, but in a subsequent chapter, a man on the beach sees her and her sister and is able to rescue Ursula from her death. In yet another early chapter, Ursula’s older brother Maurice throws a doll of hers out of her bedroom window when she is five years old. She chases after it: in one version, she falls off the roof to her death; in another, the family’s maid Bridget comes up the stairs and prevents Ursula from jumping onto the roof. The clear progression of these early chapters does imply that there is a particular tragedy in a person who dies very young, and that they should be given the chance to have some kind of fulfillment.

Yet later storylines complicate the idea that what seems to be a happier or a longer life is necessarily better, arguing that sometimes, bad things are necessary to prevent worse things from happening. Ursula becomes increasingly cognizant over time of her ability to change her fate, which leads her to try to prevent her own death in some storylines. When Ursula is nine, Bridget visits London to celebrate the end of World War I and catches the flu, leading to Bridget, Ursula, and her younger brother Teddy’s deaths. In later versions, Ursula tries to prevent Bridget from going, even resorting to pushing Bridget down the stairs so that she becomes injured and cannot go. When Ursula is sixteen, she has a crush on a neighbor of hers, Benjamin Cole. Their romance (which is stifled in some versions, and fully-fledged in others) alters the life of another neighbor, Nancy Shawcross. When Ursula is rebuffed by Benjamin, she ends up walking Nancy home after a birthday celebration. But in the versions in which Ursula and Benjamin’s romance flourishes, they sneak away to kiss, and Nancy is murdered while walking home alone. Thus, even though Ursula is happier, her happiness leads to a far worse outcome for someone else. Perhaps the ultimate example of the idea that a longer life does not necessarily lead to the happiest life emerges in the timelines surrounding World War II. Ursula realizes that she can change the trajectory of the war by befriending a girl Eva Braun early in her life. Eva eventually becomes Hitler’s mistress, allowing Ursula to get close to him and kill him in 1930, prior to the rise of the Nazi Party. Ursula knows that shooting Hitler will lead to her immediate death (which it does), but she also believes that this action will prevent global suffering, tragedy, and death (including her own and that of several of her family members). However, Ursula’s final life sees her reuniting with her brother Teddy after the war, leaving it ambiguous whether Ursula believes that this ultimate sacrifice is truly worth making.

Atkinson’s novel has broad implications concerning success and happiness, as Ursula’s reincarnations raise the question of what constitutes a good life or a better life. In treating each possible storyline with equal validity, Atkinson argues that there is no right version, forcing readers to evaluate which of Ursula’s lives they find most compelling or satisfying, and to evaluate their own idea of what makes life fulfilling.